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Green
Psychology

by
Ralph Metzner, Ph.D.

No
one can doubt that we live in a time of
unprecedented ecological destruction. The
fabric of life on this planet is being
degraded at an ever accelerating pace,
accompanied by massive loss of animal and
plant diversity and escalating threats to
human health and well-being. Evolutionary
biologists tell us that there have been
numerous episodes of worldwide extinction
before, including five major
"spasms" involving the loss of up to
90 percent of existing species -- the
last one being the cataclysm sixty-five
million years ago that brought the Age of
Dinosaurs to an end. What is unprecedented
about the present situation is that it is the
actions and technological productions of one
species -- the human being --
that are bringing about this biosphere
meltdown. Increasing numbers of people have
therefore come to the conclusion that it is in
the hearts and minds of human beings that the
causes and cures of the ecocatastrophe
are to be found.

This
is the basic reason why a psychologist like me
is concerning himself with the imbalance in
the human-nature relationship and how it can
be healed. If the imbalance exists because of
certain mistaken or delusional attitudes,
perceptions, and beliefs, then we can ask the
psychological questions of how this came about
and how it can be changed.

As
a psychotherapist, I am a member of a
profession that deals with psychic disturbance
and pathology. Cannot what we have learned
from working with troubled individuals and
families help us deal with this collective
psychopathology, this profound alienation of
the human psyche from Earth? These are a few
of the basic questions of "green
psychology" that I wish to address in
this book (Green
Psychology: Transforming Our Relationship to
the Earth).

I
prefer the term green psychology to ecopsychology,
which is presently gaining considerable
currency largely owing to Theodore Roszak's
brilliant work in Voice
of the Earth. The reason is that those
of us in this field (including Roszak) do not
mean to advocate the creation of a new
subdiscipline of psychology, to join clinical,
social, developmental, and other forms. Rather
we are talking about a fundamental
re-envisioning of what psychology is, or what
it should have been in the first place -- a
revision that would take the ecological
context of human life into account. As Roszak
says, "Psychology needs ecology, and
ecology needs psychology."

The
absence of any consideration given to the
ecological basis of human life in textbooks
and theories of psychology is startling: it's
as if we lived in a vacuum or a space capsule.
Interestingly, some of the earliest and most
profound contributions to an ecological
psychology were made by nonpsychologists: the
ecologist Paul Shepard (in Nature
and Madness), the theologian Thomas
Berry (in The
Dream of the Earth), the philosopher
Warwick Fox (in Transpersonal
Ecology), and the historian Theodore
Roszak (in The
Voice
of the Earth).

The
kind of fundamental re-envisioning called for
by ecologically-minded "green"
psychologists parallels similar movements in
other fields. Philosophers in the new field of
environmental ethics have been working for
twenty years on the philosophical and moral
aspects of environmental problems and how
ethical considerations can be brought into
discussions of public policy. A small but
growing number of ecological economists have
been investigating the thorny problems
involved in reenvisioning conventional
economic theory to take the ecological basis
of all economic activity into account.

Unlikely
as it may seem, even the field of religious
studies has undergone significant
soul-searching, under the stimulus of
devastating critiques by environmental
philosophers. Conferences have been held in
which representatives of the major organized
religions have examined their traditions in
response to a call for religious consideration
of ecological issues. Together with major
paradigm shifts in the natural sciences --
primarily from the mechanistic, atomistic
framework to a systems view of nature and the
cosmos -- these reenvisionings amount
to the beginnings of an ecological or systems
worldview.

Subversive
Science

Ecology
has been called the "subversive
science" because by making relationships
and interdependencies the central focus of its
concerns, it subverts the traditional academic
tendencies to specialization and
fragmentation. Ecopsychology within a systems
worldview, therefore, of necessity, would have
to consider questions traditionally dealt with
by philosophers, economists, biologists,
theologians, or historians from within their
respective paradigms.

As
an educator, I have wrestled for twenty years
with the problems involved in teaching
ecological perspectives to students who do not
see the relevance of these issues to their
interests in the human psyche or in
self-development. I can't say that I have
found any certain answers to this educational
dilemma, but the essays in this book point to
possible approaches that I've found useful.

A
new understanding of the role of the human in
the biosphere is urgently needed. Philosophers
dating back to the European Romantic movement
and American Transcendentalism have identified
the domination of nature by humans as the root
pathology of Western civilization. In the
twentieth century, as the pace of worldwide
ecological destruction and the loss of species
diversity has accelerated under the relentless
onslaught of technological industrialism, such
critiques have taken on a tone of urgency
verging on desperation.

A
distinction can be made between those
environmental movements that focus on improved
legislative control over pollution and waste
and on scientific ecosystem management, on the
one hand, and, on the other, those movements
of "radical ecology" that challenge
the very foundations of the modernist
industrial worldview and the ideologies of
domination associated with it. Radical ecology
movements include deep ecology, ecofeminism,
social ecology, socialist ecology, ecojustice,
bioregionalism and perhaps ecopsychology, if
considered from a holistic or systems
perspective.

The
radical ecology movements emphasize one or
another form of domination as the core of the
interlocking systems of domination that
characterize the modern world. The deep
ecology movement has as its central focus the
replacement of anthropocentric, exploitative
attitudestoward
nature by nondominating eco- or biocentric
values and paradigms. Ecofeminism links the
domination of nature with the patriachal
domination of women. Social ecology critiques
all forms of hierarchical order and
domination, whether of class, ethnicity, or
gender. For socialist ecology the crucial
diagnosis is via the analysis of capital
accumulation and the profit motive. The eco-
or environmental justice movement focuses on
the links between racism and the human
domination of nature. Bioregionalism involves
a critique of conventional political and
economic approaches to places and regions.
Green psychology, or ecopsychology, could also
be considered "radical"--insofar
as it posits a fundamental reorientation of
human attitudes toward the totality of the
"more-than-human world."

In
addition to these radical re-envisionings of
fundamental paradigms and value systems in the
social sciences, philosophy, and religion,
there has also been an increased openness and
receptivity to indigenous and archaic forms of
knowledge. As the environmental devastation
wrought by the industrial model of development
increases, the realization has grown that
indigenous societies (those that have
survived) have, in fact, often preserved
practices of sustainability that we are now
desperately trying to re-invent.

As
the generally negative or neglectful attitudes
toward the environment enshrined in the major
organized religions have become more obvious,
many concerned individuals have found
themselves turning toward the animistic,
polytheistic religion of their
"pagan" ancestors -- the
pre-Christian "country dwellers" who
recognized and respected the spiritual
intelligences inherent in nature. As the
spiritual emptiness and moral shallowness in
many religious and psychotherapeutic systems
have become more and more evident, thousands
of seekers have turned to shamanic practices --
such as the shamanic journey, the vision
quest, or the use of hallucinogenic visionary
plants -- to cultivate a more direct
psychic, conscious connection with the natural
world.